Vignettes

New paintings by Damian Moppett at Catriona Jeffries Gallery. Entitled Vignettes, the exhibition features ten figurative paintings drawn from photographs by Edward Striechen, Dorothea Lange, Andre Kertész and Moppett himself. Which photos correspond to which paintings is unclear to me, nor is knowing what goes where important in the overall scheme of things. Each painting is an event at the mercy of narrative, which is where we, the viewer(s), come in.

Among the ghoulish party scenes, Cheeveresque swimmers and still-lifes (two of irises, one of folded tea towels) is Little Blonde Head (2020) (see above).

Despite the singularity implied in the title, there are two figures in Little Blonde Head. On the left, the eponymous head whose profile resembles a figure in a painting (below) by one of the exhibition's two painter influences, Philip Guston (the other is Van Gogh). On the right, full-faced, a local collector who has -- or who has had -- a number of Moppett's works in his collection.

The question of what to make of Little Blonde Head is determined by what you bring to it. If you are familiar with the story behind Guston's Friend -- to M.F. (1978) (that it was made after Guston's friend Morton Feldman blanked him at a gathering after Guston, a noted abstract expressionist painter, returned to figuration in 1967), then that knowledge has bearing on the narrative. If you don't recognize the figure on the right -- that (as I have learned) has bearing, too.